Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859840566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Book Description
Appearing for the first time in an English translation, Introduction to Modernity is one of Henri Lefebvre's greatest works. Published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. It is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin's death—an analysis in which the contours of our own "postmodernity" appear with startling clarity. Lefebvre's lectures have become legendary, and something of his charismatic presence and delivery is captured in this book, which he intended "to be understood in the mind's ear ... and not simply to be read." With its mercurial shifts of tone, now intensely poetic, now conversational, it not only explores modernity, it exemplifies it. Equally experimental in conception is the book's remarkable structure, twelve "preludes" through which a range of recurrent themes are interwoven in free-form counterpoint: irony as a critical tool, utopianism, nature and culture, the Stalinization of Marxism, the alienation of everyday life, the cybernetic society ... What gradually emerges is not only a series of original concepts about humanity and culture, but an extraordinary invocation of the complexity of social contradictions. Yet the fragmented structure of the book is not left to float free. Its shifting and eclectic melodies and leitmotifs have a solid ground basis: the wish to rehabilitate the Marxist dialectic as a method for understanding and transforming the modern world. This program is at the heart of the book, and gives it its underlying coherence, making Introduction to Modernity not only essential reading for all students of European cultural history, but also a key text for Marxism in the post-communist world of the late twentieth century.
Introduction to Modernity
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844677834
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
Originally published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. A classic analysis of the modern world using Marxist dialectic, it is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin’s death—an analysis in which the contours of our own “postmodernity” appear with startling clarity.
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844677834
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
Originally published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. A classic analysis of the modern world using Marxist dialectic, it is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin’s death—an analysis in which the contours of our own “postmodernity” appear with startling clarity.
Modernity
Author: Stuart Hall
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
ISBN: 9781557867162
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 672
Book Description
Provides a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and ideas of modern society, focusing on the formation, consolidation, and prospects of modernity.
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
ISBN: 9781557867162
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 672
Book Description
Provides a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and ideas of modern society, focusing on the formation, consolidation, and prospects of modernity.
Modernism: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Christopher Butler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192804413
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 137
Book Description
A compact introduction to modernism--why it began, what it is, and how it hasshaped virtually all aspects of 20th and 21st century life
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192804413
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 137
Book Description
A compact introduction to modernism--why it began, what it is, and how it hasshaped virtually all aspects of 20th and 21st century life
Introduction to Modernity
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859840566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Book Description
Appearing for the first time in an English translation, Introduction to Modernity is one of Henri Lefebvre's greatest works. Published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. It is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin's death—an analysis in which the contours of our own "postmodernity" appear with startling clarity. Lefebvre's lectures have become legendary, and something of his charismatic presence and delivery is captured in this book, which he intended "to be understood in the mind's ear ... and not simply to be read." With its mercurial shifts of tone, now intensely poetic, now conversational, it not only explores modernity, it exemplifies it. Equally experimental in conception is the book's remarkable structure, twelve "preludes" through which a range of recurrent themes are interwoven in free-form counterpoint: irony as a critical tool, utopianism, nature and culture, the Stalinization of Marxism, the alienation of everyday life, the cybernetic society ... What gradually emerges is not only a series of original concepts about humanity and culture, but an extraordinary invocation of the complexity of social contradictions. Yet the fragmented structure of the book is not left to float free. Its shifting and eclectic melodies and leitmotifs have a solid ground basis: the wish to rehabilitate the Marxist dialectic as a method for understanding and transforming the modern world. This program is at the heart of the book, and gives it its underlying coherence, making Introduction to Modernity not only essential reading for all students of European cultural history, but also a key text for Marxism in the post-communist world of the late twentieth century.
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859840566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Book Description
Appearing for the first time in an English translation, Introduction to Modernity is one of Henri Lefebvre's greatest works. Published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. It is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin's death—an analysis in which the contours of our own "postmodernity" appear with startling clarity. Lefebvre's lectures have become legendary, and something of his charismatic presence and delivery is captured in this book, which he intended "to be understood in the mind's ear ... and not simply to be read." With its mercurial shifts of tone, now intensely poetic, now conversational, it not only explores modernity, it exemplifies it. Equally experimental in conception is the book's remarkable structure, twelve "preludes" through which a range of recurrent themes are interwoven in free-form counterpoint: irony as a critical tool, utopianism, nature and culture, the Stalinization of Marxism, the alienation of everyday life, the cybernetic society ... What gradually emerges is not only a series of original concepts about humanity and culture, but an extraordinary invocation of the complexity of social contradictions. Yet the fragmented structure of the book is not left to float free. Its shifting and eclectic melodies and leitmotifs have a solid ground basis: the wish to rehabilitate the Marxist dialectic as a method for understanding and transforming the modern world. This program is at the heart of the book, and gives it its underlying coherence, making Introduction to Modernity not only essential reading for all students of European cultural history, but also a key text for Marxism in the post-communist world of the late twentieth century.
The Formations of Modernity
Author: Bram Gieben
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9780745609607
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Formations of Modernity is a major introductory textbook offering an account of the important historical processes, institutions and ideas that have shaped the development of modern societies. This challenging and innovative book 'maps' the evolution of those distinctive forms of political, economic, social and cultural life which characterize modern societies, from their origins in early modern Europe to the nineteenth century. It examines the roots of modern knowledge and the birth of the social sciences in the Enlightenment, and analyses the impact on the emerging identity of 'the West' of its encounters through exploration, trade, conquest and colonization, with 'other civilizations'. Designed as an introduction to modern societies and modern sociological analyses, this book is of value to students on a wide variety of social science courses in universities and colleges and also to readers with no prior knowledge of sociology. Selected readings from a broad range of classical writers (Weber, Durkheim, Marx, Freud, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) and contemporary thinkers (Michael Mann, E.P. Thompson, Edward Said) are integrated in each chapter, together with student questions and exercises.
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9780745609607
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Formations of Modernity is a major introductory textbook offering an account of the important historical processes, institutions and ideas that have shaped the development of modern societies. This challenging and innovative book 'maps' the evolution of those distinctive forms of political, economic, social and cultural life which characterize modern societies, from their origins in early modern Europe to the nineteenth century. It examines the roots of modern knowledge and the birth of the social sciences in the Enlightenment, and analyses the impact on the emerging identity of 'the West' of its encounters through exploration, trade, conquest and colonization, with 'other civilizations'. Designed as an introduction to modern societies and modern sociological analyses, this book is of value to students on a wide variety of social science courses in universities and colleges and also to readers with no prior knowledge of sociology. Selected readings from a broad range of classical writers (Weber, Durkheim, Marx, Freud, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) and contemporary thinkers (Michael Mann, E.P. Thompson, Edward Said) are integrated in each chapter, together with student questions and exercises.
Entangled Paths Towards Modernity
Author: Augusta Dimou
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9789639776388
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474
Book Description
This is an important and innovative comparative study of socialist movements and regimes of modernization in the Balkans, encompassing Serbian populism, Bulgarian social democracy and Greek communism. It makes an original contribution both to the history of political ideas and to the political sociology of radical and socialist movements. It provides a fascinating account of the transplantation of ideologies that were adopted from Western Europe and from Russia into the very different environment of the Balkans, and traces their adaptation and their reception in this new environment. Book jacket.
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9789639776388
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474
Book Description
This is an important and innovative comparative study of socialist movements and regimes of modernization in the Balkans, encompassing Serbian populism, Bulgarian social democracy and Greek communism. It makes an original contribution both to the history of political ideas and to the political sociology of radical and socialist movements. It provides a fascinating account of the transplantation of ideologies that were adopted from Western Europe and from Russia into the very different environment of the Balkans, and traces their adaptation and their reception in this new environment. Book jacket.
Ulrich Beck
Author: Mads Peter Sørensen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415693691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
In Ulrich Beck, Mads P. Sørensen and Allan Christiansen provide an extensive and thorough introduction to the German sociologist's collected works. Focusing on the theory outlined in Beck's chief work, Risk Society, and on his theory of second modernity, Sørensen and Christiansen explain the sociologist's ideas and writing in a clear and accessible way.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415693691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
In Ulrich Beck, Mads P. Sørensen and Allan Christiansen provide an extensive and thorough introduction to the German sociologist's collected works. Focusing on the theory outlined in Beck's chief work, Risk Society, and on his theory of second modernity, Sørensen and Christiansen explain the sociologist's ideas and writing in a clear and accessible way.
China—Art—Modernity
Author: David Clarke
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888455915
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
China—Art—Modernity provides a critical introduction to modern and contemporary Chinese art as a whole. It illuminates what is distinctive and significant about the rich range of art created during the tumultuous period of Chinese history from the end of Imperial rule to the present day. The story of Chinese art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is shown to be deeply intertwined with that of the country’s broader socio-political development, with art serving both as a tool for the creation of a new national culture and as a means for critiquing the forms that culture has taken. The book’s approach is inclusive. In addition to treating art within the Chinese Mainland itself during the Republican and Communist eras, for instance, it also looks at the art of colonial Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora. Similarly, it gives equal prominence to artists employing tools and idioms of indigenous Chinese origin and those who engage with international styles and contemporary media. In this way it writes China into the global story of modern art as a whole at a moment in intellectual history when Western-centred stories of modern and contemporary culture are finally being recognized as parochial and inadequate. Assuming no previous background knowledge of Chinese history and culture, this concise yet comprehensive and richly-illustrated book will appeal to those who already have an established interest in modern Chinese art and those for whom this is a novel topic. It will be of particular value to students of Chinese art or modern art in general, but it is also for those in the wider reading public with a curiosity about modern China. At a time when that country has become a major actor on the world stage in all sorts of ways, accessible sources of information concerning its modern visual culture are nevertheless surprisingly scarce. As a consequence, a fully nuanced picture of China’s place in the modern world remains elusive. China—Art—Modernity is a timely remedy for that situation. ‘Here is a book that offers a comprehensive account of the dizzying transformations of Chinese art and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Breaking free of conventional dichotomies between traditional and modern, Chinese and Western that have hobbled earlier studies, Clarke’s highly original book is exactly what I would assign my own students. Anyone eager to understand developments in China within the global history of modern art should read this book.’ —Robert E. Harrist Jr., Columbia University ‘Clarke’s book presents a critically astute mapping of the arts of modern and contemporary China. It highlights the significance of urban and industrial contexts, migration, diasporas and the margins of the mainland, while imaginatively seeking to inscribe its subject into the broader story of modern art. A timely and reliable intervention—and indispensable for the student and non-specialist reader.’ —Shane McCausland, SOAS University of London
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888455915
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
China—Art—Modernity provides a critical introduction to modern and contemporary Chinese art as a whole. It illuminates what is distinctive and significant about the rich range of art created during the tumultuous period of Chinese history from the end of Imperial rule to the present day. The story of Chinese art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is shown to be deeply intertwined with that of the country’s broader socio-political development, with art serving both as a tool for the creation of a new national culture and as a means for critiquing the forms that culture has taken. The book’s approach is inclusive. In addition to treating art within the Chinese Mainland itself during the Republican and Communist eras, for instance, it also looks at the art of colonial Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora. Similarly, it gives equal prominence to artists employing tools and idioms of indigenous Chinese origin and those who engage with international styles and contemporary media. In this way it writes China into the global story of modern art as a whole at a moment in intellectual history when Western-centred stories of modern and contemporary culture are finally being recognized as parochial and inadequate. Assuming no previous background knowledge of Chinese history and culture, this concise yet comprehensive and richly-illustrated book will appeal to those who already have an established interest in modern Chinese art and those for whom this is a novel topic. It will be of particular value to students of Chinese art or modern art in general, but it is also for those in the wider reading public with a curiosity about modern China. At a time when that country has become a major actor on the world stage in all sorts of ways, accessible sources of information concerning its modern visual culture are nevertheless surprisingly scarce. As a consequence, a fully nuanced picture of China’s place in the modern world remains elusive. China—Art—Modernity is a timely remedy for that situation. ‘Here is a book that offers a comprehensive account of the dizzying transformations of Chinese art and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Breaking free of conventional dichotomies between traditional and modern, Chinese and Western that have hobbled earlier studies, Clarke’s highly original book is exactly what I would assign my own students. Anyone eager to understand developments in China within the global history of modern art should read this book.’ —Robert E. Harrist Jr., Columbia University ‘Clarke’s book presents a critically astute mapping of the arts of modern and contemporary China. It highlights the significance of urban and industrial contexts, migration, diasporas and the margins of the mainland, while imaginatively seeking to inscribe its subject into the broader story of modern art. A timely and reliable intervention—and indispensable for the student and non-specialist reader.’ —Shane McCausland, SOAS University of London
Modernity At Large
Author: Arjun Appadurai
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452900063
Category : Civilization, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452900063
Category : Civilization, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Reforming Modernity
Author: Wael B. Hallaq
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550553
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
Reforming Modernity is a sweeping intellectual history and philosophical reflection built around the work of the Morocco-based philosopher Abdurrahman Taha, one of the most significant philosophers in the Islamic world since the colonial era. Wael B. Hallaq contends that Taha is at the forefront of forging a new, non-Western-centric philosophical tradition. He explores how Taha’s philosophical project sheds light on recent intellectual currents in the Islamic world and puts forth a formidable critique of Western and Islamic modernities. Hallaq argues that Taha’s project departs from—but leaves behind—the epistemological grounds in which most modern Muslim intellectuals have anchored their programs. Taha systematically rejects the modes of thought that have dominated the Muslim intellectual scene since the beginning of the twentieth century—nationalism, Marxism, secularism, political Islamism, and liberalism. Instead, he provides alternative ways of thinking, forcefully and virtuosically developing an ethical system with a view toward reforming existing modernities. Hallaq analyzes the ethical thread that runs throughout Taha’s oeuvre, illuminating how Taha weaves it into a discursive engagement with the central questions that plague modernity in both the West and the Muslim world. The first introduction to Taha’s ethical philosophy for Western audiences, Reforming Modernity presents his complex thought in an accessible way while engaging with it critically. Hallaq’s conversation with Taha’s work both proffers a cogent critique of modernity and points toward answers for its endemic and seemingly insoluble problems.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550553
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
Reforming Modernity is a sweeping intellectual history and philosophical reflection built around the work of the Morocco-based philosopher Abdurrahman Taha, one of the most significant philosophers in the Islamic world since the colonial era. Wael B. Hallaq contends that Taha is at the forefront of forging a new, non-Western-centric philosophical tradition. He explores how Taha’s philosophical project sheds light on recent intellectual currents in the Islamic world and puts forth a formidable critique of Western and Islamic modernities. Hallaq argues that Taha’s project departs from—but leaves behind—the epistemological grounds in which most modern Muslim intellectuals have anchored their programs. Taha systematically rejects the modes of thought that have dominated the Muslim intellectual scene since the beginning of the twentieth century—nationalism, Marxism, secularism, political Islamism, and liberalism. Instead, he provides alternative ways of thinking, forcefully and virtuosically developing an ethical system with a view toward reforming existing modernities. Hallaq analyzes the ethical thread that runs throughout Taha’s oeuvre, illuminating how Taha weaves it into a discursive engagement with the central questions that plague modernity in both the West and the Muslim world. The first introduction to Taha’s ethical philosophy for Western audiences, Reforming Modernity presents his complex thought in an accessible way while engaging with it critically. Hallaq’s conversation with Taha’s work both proffers a cogent critique of modernity and points toward answers for its endemic and seemingly insoluble problems.